By Nick Hoult BBC Sport Online

Sri Lanka's preparations for the pivotal second Test against England have received a damaging blow after the bowling actions of two of their bowlers came under fire from the most cutting of sources - fellow players.

Just days after Adam Gilchrist criticised Muttiah Muralitharan's action, England batsman Mark Butcher raised the ante by dragging the action of Ruchira Perera into the mud.

Perera's action was reported by the umpires after the first Test at Lord's. Ironically, he could be replaced by Muralitharan at Edgbaston, though he is eligible to play.

Australia vice-captain Gilchrist was charged by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) for making comments "detrimental to the interests of the game".

ECB stalls on Butcher

It remains to be seen if the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) will also move to censure Butcher after he claimed Perera "runs up and throws it at you" in a Surrey newspaper.

Gilchrist opened closed wounds between Australia and Sri Lanks with his comments over Muralitharan.

Perera came under fire from Butcher

"I think technically if you read the rules, I think he's not quite within them," Gilchrist said.

Not exactly a damning tirade but with sensitivities running high over Murali's action, it has refreshed the debate about the most talked about elbow in world sport.

Muralitharan was no-balled by Darrell Hair seven times for throwing in the Boxing Day Test at the MCG in 1995, and was later no-balled in a limited-overs match in Brisbane, prompting Sri Lanka to walk off the field in protest.

With Sri Lanka visiting Australia later this year for a one-day triangular tournament with England, the ACB moved quickly to censure Gilchrist, but is he just repeating the mantra of others?

His pronouncement, made during a lunchtime date with an Aussie Rules Football Club, follows similar statements this year from Bishen Bedi and Michael Holding.

"If Murali doesn't chuck, then show me how to bowl," Bedi said February.

"Murali's arm doesn't go up at all. I have a picture of him bowling somewhere. He looks like a good javelin thrower. Some people are born blind but will a blind man be allowed to fly an aircraft? So why should a bowler be allowed to chuck because he has a defective arm?

"What does not conform to law is illegal and the law has to be applied uniformly. The problem is that the parent body (ICC) is not taking cognisance. It may soon become monstrous - every team may end up with three or four chuckers."

Gilchrist breached the ACB's code of behaviour

Bedi was vilified for his comments but they were soon followed by Holding, the ICC's bowling advisor, who cast doubts over the legality of the bent-arm action.

"The laws are very specific," he told the Wisden Cricket Asia magazine.

"A bowler's arm, once it gets to shoulder height, should stay straight until delivery.

"If it's bent, then it should remain bent to the same degree and should never alter. The law says nothing about hyper-extended bent or abnormal bent."

Gilchrist has apologised to Muralitharan and according to Sri Lanka the matter is at an end, but of his comments that might have caused the most alarm in Colombo were the ones that claimed throwing is endemic on the sub-continent.

"It's amazing when you do go to the sub-continent and you see so many young bowlers in the nets and they all run in and they've all got similar actions and they obviously just do not worry about it," Gilchrist said.

On England's winter tours to Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2000-01 the players were privately amazed by the amount of net bowlers with suspect actions, and it is through this system that players such as Perera have graduated.

Perera has been ordered to work with Sri Lanka's bowling coach Daryl Foster to correct his action.

The remedial work will be put in place during the current tour to England, but perhaps the more long-term aim should be working with youngsters to prevent copycat actions in the future, and a repeat of the current furores.